CHAPEL HILL, NC, April 29, 2009 – Stanly County will soon have detailed data about local weather conditions and new weather-related projects for school children thanks to the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) Weather Web competition.
The county is the latest in the list of North Carolina counties awarded a weather station through Weather Web, which aims to enhance weather-related K-12 education and improve the quantity and quality of weather data in under served areas of the state.
The new weather station will be installed in Stanly County in the fall of 2009. The station will collect comprehensive data about weather in the area, which will be used in a new meteorology education project developed by Jamie Mabry and Beth Everhart, science teachers at New London Choice Middle School in New London. Mabry and Everhart developed the winning educational curriculum in the Weather Web competition, which challenges schools in counties without research-grade weather stations to develop hands-on projects and curricula that use weather station data.
The station will be installed and maintained by the State Climate Office of North Carolina and will also provide needed data to emergency response teams, forecasters and state climatologists to be used in forecasting, emergency planning and response and resource management.
“It is a great honor to be selected for this award and I feel that it will benefit not only students in Stanly County, but the citizens of the county,” said Mabry, a 6th grade teacher and a Specialist in the North Carolina National Guard, who will soon be deployed on a mission. “Weather plays a very important part of our everyday life and to receive this for our county creates a great joy for all. In May I will be leaving for Fort Sill, OK, and then deploy to an exercise. I am very honored to serve my country and also help the young people of America today as a teacher. I look forward to seeing this Weather Web weather station when I return home.”
Proposals for the 2009 Weather Web competition were submitted to RENCI in March and representatives of RENCI and the State Climate Office reviewed the proposals in early April to determine the winning curriculum and county. The new curriculum will be posted on the RENCI website at http://www.renci.org/focus-areas/education-and-outreach/renci-weather-web, where past winning Weather Web curricula are already available. The SCO will determine the most suitable site for a station in the county.
The winners from last year’s Weather Web competition came from Alexander Central High School in Taylorsville (Alexander County); Ocracoke School on Ocracoke Island (Hyde County); and from a collaboration of several schools in Yancey County.
For more information about the Weather Web competition go to
http://www.renci.org/focus-areas/education-and-outreach/renci-weather-web
The winning curriculum will be posted on this website in June. All data from the awarded station, and from existing stations in the state, are available on the SCO website at http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/cronos.
RENCI…Catalyst for Innovation
The Renaissance Computing Institute, a multi-institutional organization, brings together multidisciplinary experts and advanced technological capabilities to address pressing research issues and to find solutions to complex problems that affect the quality of life in North Carolina, our nation and the world. RENCI leverages its expertise and resources in leading edge computing, visualization, networking and data technologies to catalyze new collaborations and solve problems. Founded in 2004 as a major collaborative venture of Duke University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the state of North Carolina, RENCI is a statewide virtual organization.
